March 1, 2016

WANTED: More sideeye pics and GIFs

'Cause I have a feeling that I'll be needing them.

Just put em' R-A-T here.

I might have a sideeye pic or GIF that interests you. Trades are accepted, desired, and appreciated.

February 28, 2016

So now it's that black folks won't vote for Sanders because they are anti-Semitic? (UPADTED)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/02/24/1490331/--Enough-is-enough-If-you-have-something-to-say-say-it-directly

Enough is enough. If you have something to say it, say it directly"

Yes, I have seen the “artful smears” and “innuendos” around here for some time. In fact, I was directly accused of being anti-semitic.

People seem to have forgotten that Joe Lieberman was Al Gore’s running mate in 2000 and that the Democratic ticket won ~90% of the African-American vote.

Do you even know who this next guy is?

His name is Steve Cohen.

He is currently the House Rep for the 9th Congressional District in Tennessee, a seat once held by Harold Ford, Sr. and Harold Ford, Jr.

In fact, Cohen defeated Harold Ford’s younger brother, Jake (who ran as an independent) to win that seat in 2006.

Cohen has repeatedly defeated African American Democratic challengers in order to maintain that seat.

The voters in the 9th Congressional (which includes Memphis) have repeatedly voted for Cohen in spite of the fact that the support of black clergy in the 9th Congressional has been lukewarm, at best.

And yes, anti-Semitism has been an issue in some of Cohen’s previous campaigns...and black voters have paid it no mind and voted for Cohen anyway.

The racial/ethnic demographics of Tennessee’s 9th Congressional speak for themselves:


36.1% White, 59.7% Black, 1.5% Asian, 3.0% Hispanic, 0.2% Native American, 0.3% other

(FTR, Rep. Cohen has endorsed Hillary Clinton.)

I say all of this to say, don’t you dare even attempt to fix your mouth to blame Bernie Sanders inability to attract black voters on anti-Semitism in the black community.

UPDATED: I don't come here every day, I was not aware that an entire OP was devoted to the insinuation

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511306736

An OP that contained these comments:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1312309
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1321555
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1311142
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1307003

I'm warning you...if I have to spend more time doing an exhaustive job of tracking down these OP's and comments, I will not be a happy man.

"certain core constituencies", indeed...if that ain't a dog-whistle, then I don't know what is.

February 28, 2016

Interesting comments from Sanders in Minnesota

http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeednews/south-carolina-democratic-primary-winner#.vyxm27bAk

Sanders spent the day on Saturday outside South Carolina, campaigning at huge rallies in Texas and Minnesota, Super Tuesday states the Sanders campaign hopes will give him a large number of delegates next week.

“There’s no way we are going to lose Minnesota,” Sanders said to the cheering crowd. “I can see that. You are just too smart.”

That's...very interesting.

February 28, 2016

I have a double feature for you

First up is bravenak.

Black People Don't Have To Explain Why They Vote Hillary

I was not going to bother saying anything.

But here goes:

This expectation that we black people have to explain ourselves to the satisfaction of white liberals is tiresome and demeaning. Do we ever go around and ask white people to give us an explanation that satisfies our desparate curiosity as to why they are not informed enough to vote for the people who we think are in their best interests? Do we constantly rail against the voting habits of the white population as if we are terribly concerned that their habit of voting republican is destructive to us personally? And if we did, would anybody have the slightest concern about our need to be satisfied with their answer?

This sudden concern for our incarceration, our poverty, our hurt feelings over some remark Hillary made twenty five years ago is remarkable and terribly transparent. The shallow nature of the concern from many is so noticeable that I find it hard to even read most diaries or articles written to appeal to blacks for Bernie.

The constant name dropping of halfway relevant black figures is almost heartbreaking. No matter how often we say it is offensive, we hear cries of ‘you don’t speak for all black people!!!’, from people who have no idea what is feels like to be black.

I would answer your queries, but honestly it has been answered a million times, by hundreds of thousands of black people, and if it is not understood by now, it never will be.

The paternalism of those we call allies, who rant and rage and lash out on us with a mighty fury, ‘for our own good!’, to help us desperate, uneducated, ignorant, uninformed, needing of their guidance souls, become as enlightened as they and finally, finally by GOD vote in what they know, from their pedastal of progressive purity, is in ‘OUR BEST INTERESTS!’ is demeaning and horror inducing. See, they know much better than our dense, weakminded selves what is best for blacks. They remind us day after day how much they know about what we should think, do and want, and how we should vote. How could they not?

That is the answer.

And on the backend is yours truly.

I hate to say that I told you so...

In a 12/1/15 Black Kos commentary, I concluded:

While policies, platforms and legislative votes are historically important (prerequisites, in fact) to black voters, the popular support of Roosevelts (or at least Eleanor) and the Clintons (for all of their faults and policy shade) in black communities illuminate a indispensable maxim for attaining the black vote: It is much less important for us (black people) to get to know you (the candidate) than for you to get to know us.

That statement was nothing more and nothing less than what many black Kossacks (even those that support Bernie Sanders) had been saying for months.

It appears that the last time that Bernie Sanders had much (if any) contact with black communities would be in the 1960’s.

That has nothing to do with endorsing Jesse Jackson in Vermont 1984 and 1988.

That does not have much to do with whatever votes he may have made as a Congressman supporting my community.

It is ludicrous for Bernie Sanders to expect that he would be able to get the levels of support that will apparently need after being physically ​absent from out communities for 50 years only to come back for a vote.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for Bernie Sanders supporters to understand

Black folks are going to smell that from a mile away.

Let me add a note for some of the Clinton supporters here: I would not go around spiking the football as some of you have been doing the past couple of days. You don’t want to do that to yourself because this black man, this black voter (early voting in Illinois begins on Monday) really ain’t feeling Hillary Clinton at all.

Much shade is being thrown, I assure you.

It's good to be back.

February 27, 2016

Question submitted by Chitown Kev

February 27, 2016

No refuge over here at DU, either?

...and I thought that DK was pretty bad, LOL

May as well prepare for the avalanche of a whole lot of "thinly veiled" bullshit that should start pouring in in about ~24 hours.

February 24, 2016

Please remember...

That on November 7, 2000, Al Gore won 90% of the black vote in the presidential election.

http://www.pollingreport.com/2000.htm

I say that in order to remind those of you that may have forgotten that Joe Lieberman was Al Gore's running mate...

..and in case you were wondering...

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/CT/S/01/epolls.0.html

Of course, the fact that Lamont was the Democratic nominee had more to do with Lamont getting a higher percentage of African American votes than anything else.

I can read between some of the lines here w/r/t theories as to why African Americans may not be supporting Bernie Sanders...

Please...why don't you try telling some of those theories to the Congressional Representative of Tennessee's 9th Congressional District...Steve Cohen will probably laugh in your face

February 20, 2016

Why do y'all think I (as a black man) care all that much about what Bernie did over 50 years ago?

I (as a black man) get to make a determination of my own as to how much Bernie's civil rights activities in Chicago mean to me...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/02/17/1486622/-Quick-Hit-White-folks-be-funny-sometimes

Bernie Sanders civil rights activities in the 1960’s were never a very significant criteria for me in predicting whether and how President Sanders might approach the problems that African Americans face.

The relationship of Sanders with his African American constituents (and they have been his constituents for over 25 years) is hundreds of times more significant than whether he marched with King or not.

Because Sanders’ constituents “know him” and his work far better than I do; they are better judges than you or I.

And the answer from Sanders’ African American constituents to the question of Sanders’ concern for blacks: Meh.

Sanders isn't an innocent victim of his state's demographics, suggests Brattleboro-based Reed. "He's from Brooklyn and grew up with black and brown folks," he notes. Sanders' record of largely avoiding the topic of race "is simply a choice on his part that invalidates the presence of black and brown people," contends the African American activist. "Sen. Sanders suffers from a disease called color blindness."

Colston adds, "If his career had emanated from Brooklyn, he'd have a completely different perspective" on race.

Clarence Davis, a black Shelburne resident* who worked for Sanders in the House, adds that he would like to see "more discussion of race" in which his former boss would participate. It's wrong to regard the country as having achieved a post-racial consciousness, Davis suggests. "We don't live in a color-blind society and never have," he says.

The national campaign will likely push Sanders to be more forthcoming on race. Up until now, however, it has been "as if he's running again for office in Vermont rather than for national office," says Rafael Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx who works as a student services administrator at the University of Vermont. "He's not explicit about racism."

Sanders had a poor record as mayor in appointing minority-group members — as well as women — to high-level positions, says Hines, who has lived in Burlington since 1963. The core of his progressive entourage has been entirely white and almost exclusively male, Hines adds.

"I have a great amount of respect for Bernie," she says, "except I wouldn't vote for him." Hines is supporting Clinton, whom she regards as preferable on issues of concern to women and African Americans.

In the SevenDaysVT (a publication that I’ve come to love!) there’s at least two stories that noted that Sanders had no people of color that worked for him.

I do know that since African immigration to Vermont has become a bit of an issue, Sanders has stepped up to the plate a bit: I don’t feel like hunting down those links right now but that was a point in his favor.

And the conversation continues:

MONTPELIER, Vermont — Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders may be about to hit a "black firewall" in South Carolina, as one Vermont activist on race issues put it Friday, but support for him appears to run deep in Vermont's tiny black community.

While progressive politics and home-state loyalty appeared to boost support for the state's U.S. senator at a Black Lives Matter event at the Statehouse on Friday, some observers said he could have done more during his time in the U.S. House and Senate to cement relations with residents of color and thereby keep more current on race relations in America.

Dozens of activists gathered Friday to call for a racial justice agenda in Vermont, including more hiring of black teachers and school administrators and having more accountability for state agency hiring practices.

~~~~~

Mark Hughes, leader of the group Justice For All-Vermont, said he understood why many blacks in South Carolina, site of the next Democratic primary, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus were taking an approach to Sanders that might be summed up with the phrase, "Hello, who are you?"

Because Vermont is 93.5 percent non-Hispanic white, the second-whitest state after Maine, and because Sanders has not done a lot to reach out to people of color during his time in the U.S. House and Senate, "I think there's a lot of folks from his home state where they might be having the same discussion," he said.

"We don't have a lot of interaction with our congressional delegation," Hughes said.

FTR, I think that Hillary Clinton is “meh” on this topic as well.

UPDATE: A POC supporter of Bernie Sanders, J17, "gets it."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1279926

February 11, 2016

(Some) so-called white progressives sure don't like it when

African Americans and African American leaders take the initiative and vet Bernie Sanders, asking our own questions and judging by our own (quite varied) standards.

Some of them feel that they did the vetting job already and that it is good enough.